


The Best Vacation

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Blair discuss vacations</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Vacation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday prompt Vacation

"What's the best vacation you've ever had?" Blair asked, his voice very casual. 

Jim frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he said. "I can't think of one where something hasn't gone wrong... "

Blair grinned. "I know what you mean," he chuckled. "That time you, Simon and I went fishing - it was great -

"Till we met up with the poachers."

"Till we met up with the poachers," Blair agreed. He hesitated. "What about years ago? Before you became a cop?"

Jim shook his head. "There was the one in Bali where I met Lila," he said, "but... yes, we had five good days... but then she just walked out. When we met again here... she apologised, but she never did say why, just that it wasn't anything I'd done. Before that... In the army, leaves were mostly just something to get through. Oh, for some of the guys, it was a chance to visit family and they came back full of how great it was, seeing everyone... For me? I'd nobody I wanted to visit. Before that? Dad made everything a challenge between Steven and me; a vacation was a reward for doing better than the other one. I don't know about Steven, but for me it was never fun. Even when Mom was there... it was more fun, but it was never a _vacation_ \- it was more what nowadays they call a 'staycation' - Dad never took time off, and even though Sally was there to cook his dinner he expected Mom to be there in the evenings when he came home. So the best we had was day trips to somewhere." He looked searchingly at his friend. "What about you, Chief?"

"The nearest thing I ever had to a vacation was when I got the chance to go on an expedition somewhere," he said. "The rest of the time... I worked vacations. Picked up a fair number of... I'd hesitate to say skills, but I did learn a lot. That was when I learned welding, for example, and there was the summer my uncle taught me to drive a big rig. I passed the test for that, and I've kept the licence for it - it's a useful skill to have, even though I don't often get the chance to drive something that big.

"Before I went to Rainier?" He shrugged. "I had some good times, but Naomi wasn't big on vacations per se - we'd go to a commune or a retreat for a month, but it wasn't what you'd call restful - there were always chores to be done. One place we went to - everyone there spent the summer picking fruit - even the kids two, three years old. Totally mindless... You have no idea how glad I was to leave there and get back to school."

"Wouldn't an expedition be a sort of working vacation too?" Jim asked.

"Yes, but I was _learning_ something," Blair replied. "Learning is fun."

"So you've never had a 'sit on the beach and just veg out' kind of break?"

"Have you?"

"Some of our leaves fitted that," Jim said. "So did some of the days out Mom took us when Steven and I were kids... "

"I'm not sure I'd enjoy that, though," Blair said. "And somehow I'm not sure you really did either - otherwise you wouldn't have started surfing."

Jim grinned. "Guilty as charged," he said. "I always wanted to be doing something - swimming, making sand castles... but with Mom, those were fun things, not a competition to see which of us could make the better one."

"Making sand castles... " Blair murmured. "Something Naomi classified as a total waste of time. The tide would come in and flatten the thing, so why bother? Not that we ever spent much time at the seaside. Naomi thought that was too much like following the herd, because 'everybody goes to the seaside in the summer' - it wasn't thinking for ourselves."

"So you never made a sand castle when you were a kid?"

"No."

"Right!" Jim decided. "Next good weekend we're going off somewhere quiet - I know a nice little beach a few miles north of here, secluded, hardly anyone ever goes there - and we'll make a whole village of sand castles and take a photo of it. And if the next high tide sweeps them away - we'll still have a photo to remind us of a great day out."

Blair thought about it for a moment, then he smiled. "Right!" he said. "You're on. And even if it's only a day - it'll be the best vacation ever!"


End file.
